I Thought I Wouldn't Survive

I keep a list. Not intentionally at first, but it's there in my journal. A catalogue of moments that felt so saddening. Times when the weight was so heavy I couldn't imagine the pain ever lifting. Days when I genuinely believed I wouldn't make it through.

 What's changed? I've started going back through those entries. And I've realised something profound. I'm still here. Every single thing I thought would break me permanently? I survived it. I'm standing on the other side of all those impossibly dark moments.

It wasn't that those struggles weren't real or weren't hard. They were. But they also weren't the ending I feared they'd be. And that realisation fills me with a quiet pride I didn't expect. Not pride in some grand achievement, but in the small, stubborn act of continuing.

I'm not "there" yet, wherever "there" is. But I am here. I am making it. And that counts for so much more than I gave myself credit for. Each day I survived became proof that I could survive the next one, too.

All my love,

-DandelionPrecious from MANI